Dispelling nutrition myths, ranting, and occasionally, raving

Tag Archives: RDs

I came across this journal article in an email digest last week and I discovered that I do have enough fire left in my belly to keep blogging because holy shit y’all was it ever enraging!

The article title and abstract indicate that nutrition education is missing from the education of doctors and that doctors need this education due to the important impact of diet and nutrition on health and in many disease states. No argument here. However, they then go on to say, “Without properly trained trainers, we have no one to train the doctors of tomorrow. This is a “catch 22.” Okay, they must be planning to talk about how dietitians, you know that entire profession devoted to the study of nutrition, can play a role in the full text. I mean, it seems like a pretty obvious solution. But… I find the full text and there is nary a mention of dietitians in the entire article. It was then that my blood began to boil.

Is there some sort of rule that I’m unaware of that only medical doctors are qualified to teach medical students? Have the authors never heard of dietitians? The entire article is quite frankly baffling. I’m honestly appalled that the authors, one of whom appears to be a medical doctor, are incapable of such basic research as to be able to discover that there is in fact an entire regulated allied health profession devoted entirely to the study of nutrition. They’re worried that doctors don’t know about nutrition? Well, I’m worried that doctors can completed medical school without basic research skills. I’m also a little amazed that it was accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal devoted to “advances in nutrition” and no one thought “hey, hang on a sec… this is not actually a problem. Dietitians and nutrition scientists can teach these students. Maybe we can just tell them this and save them the embarrassment of publishing this drivel.” But no, apparently everyone was like, “yes. Very serious problem. Doctors need to know about nutrition but doctors don’t know enough about nutrition to teach medical students so future doctors will all continue to graduate without the foggiest understanding of human nutrition and women will continue to suffer from anemia.”

Good news: there are plenty of dietitians and nutrition scientists (not all nutrition researchers have the RD credential) who teach dietetic students who could also teach medical students about nutrition. While they’re at it they can also let them know that doctors don’t have to be experts in every area and they can in fact refer patients to dietitians when they require nutrition support.

Someone I follow on twitter recently shared this blog post: The Rise of the Anti-Diet Movement: Is it No Longer P.C. to Want to Lose Weight? by another dietitian, Janet Helm. In the post she mused about dietitians promoting themselves as “non-diet” and what this might say about other dietitians. She agreed with many points made by dietitians, quoted in RD/writer Cara Rosenbloom’s recent excellent piece for the Washington Post about non-diet dietitians, but seemed unwilling to go so far as to embrace the philosophy herself. She ended her post with the following questions: “Can’t we all get along? Can’t intuitive eating and body positivity coexist with losing weight? Why must we line up on two sides? Why the conflict?” I’m going to do my best to respond to these questions.

First, I too have asked that same question: “Can’t we all get along?” at times. Remember craisingate? Personally, I don’t think that as dietitians we have to agree on everything. It’s okay for us to have different perspectives and approaches. Also, in the case of diet vs non-diet, I don’t see it as an issue of getting along. Maybe I’m blissfully unaware, but I haven’t seen any “non-diet” dietitians attacking other dietitians for promoting weight management. I don’t see dietitians referring to themselves as “non-diet” as lining up on an opposing side or creating conflict. Rather, I see this identification as a way for dietitians to let prospective clients know that they do not promote weight loss as a goal. In a profession which so many believe our sole mission is to help people lose weight I think that it’s necessary for RDs who do not promote weight loss diets to make this clear up-front. I don’t believe the intent is to pass judgement on other dietitians who haven’t embraced the same approach, or to create a professional divide. However, I can see how a dietitian who has built a career around weight management counselling might see this new-ish movement as a personal judgement.

My friend Cheryl Strachan, aka “Sweet Spot RD” wrote an excellent blog post last week (while I was mulling over how best to respond to Janet’s post): Why I can’t help you lose weight. This heartfelt post explained why she would no longer work with clients on weight loss. Providing the current evidence on weight loss and health and the struggle she went through to reach this position. Rather than having me regurgitate all of the evidence here, I recommend you take a few minutes to go read it and then come back.

Done? Okay, great. So you’ll note that Cheryl mentions that when she studied nutrition in 2003 it was accepted without question that weight management was a significant part of being a dietitian. I can tell you that it was the same when I went back to uni to study nutrition in 2006. I’m not sure if things have changed since then. I suspect that they haven’t, at least not completely. It takes time for institutions and society to change. As a dietitian who has worked in weight management in the past I too have struggled to fully embrace health at every size. I understand why a fellow dietitian would ask: Can’t intuitive eating and body positivity coexist with losing weight? It’s an incredibly tough question and the answer is nuanced and it may not be the same for everyone.

I do believe that intuitive eating and body positivity can peacefully coexist with weight loss. However, I think that this can only be the case when weight loss is not the ultimate goal. For me, body positivity is appreciating your body as it currently exists and continuing to appreciate it if you gain weight or lose weight. It’s about treating yourself with respect and compassion and providing your body and mind with the nourishment they need. If you are doing these things with the clandestine goal of losing weight then you are doing yourself a disservice. That being said, it’s okay to want to lose weight. We live in a society that has conditioned us from a very young age to believe that being thin is important. It’s unrealistic to except this engrained belief to vanish overnight. It takes time to relearn to listen to your body and to treat it with respect when you’ve been viewing it as the enemy, a captor, keeping the real you the thin you hidden away. So, no, body positivity and weight loss can’t coexist but yes, body positivity and weight loss can coexist.

I think that as time goes on and nutrition programs update their curriculums, as old-school dietitians are more exposed to evidence regarding the harms of weight bias and weight loss diets, and the hold-outs retire, that things will change. After all, as dietitians we are supposed to provide evidence-based best practice and the evidence against weight loss diets is mounting. Eventually there will be no non-diet dietitians because that will be the approach we all take.

The other day I was in a grocery store when a recording came over the PA system encouraging customers to speak to the in-store pharmacist about making healthy food choices. Naturally, I was like “what the fuck??”. People wonder why dietitians are so defensive of our profession. This. This sort of thing is exactly why. Because everyone seems to think that they’re qualified to dole out nutrition advice despite the fact that dietitians are the only professionals who spend over four years studying nutrition in university and must indefinitely continue our education to maintain our licensure.

It’s not cool of the chain to be asking pharmacists to provide dietary counselling. If you want to offer that service, hire yourselves some damn dietitians. It’s also not cool of the pharmacists to accept that added responsibility.

Yes, pharmacists are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to medications and they can be hugely helpful in advising customers about potential drug-nutrient interactions regarding medications that customers are taking. They more often than not, likely have a greater knowledge about nutrients in food than your average person. However, none of this equips them with the expertise to provide nutrition counselling.

The scope of practice for pharmacists in Canada contains no mention of nutrition or dietary counselling. Store owners may not know that this service is outside the scope of practice for pharmacists. Therefore, I believe that the responsibility lies with the pharmacists on-staff to let the company know that they are should not be providing this service to their customers. As allied health professionals they should recognize the limitations of their own scope of practice and defer to RDs in matters of nutrition counselling.

When I worked in a grocery store we had an in-store dietitian as well as pharmacists on-staff and everyone worked together to provide customers with the best service possible. Pharmacists have enough to do without having to get into nutrition counselling with customers, which, when done appropriately, can be quite time-consuming. Do you really want to wait longer to pick up your prescription? Setting aside the issue of expertise, do pharmacists really have the time to devote to counselling customers on nutrition? Let dietitians, who are actually trained to provide individualized dietary advice, provide this service so that pharmacists can focus on their own area of expertise.

Last week I attended the Ambition Nutrition Symposium in Toronto, to which I was fortunate enough to win free tickets. The theme of the conference was “bringing it home” and was intended to help translate nutrition theory into the kitchen and onto client’s plates. While I’m not sure the day really succeeded in that regard, I still found it to be an interesting conference with a variety of speakers and delicious food (thank you George Brown culinary students!). That being said, from my perspective, there was an elephant in the room. That elephant was the tension between professions and dietary dogma.

We started the day with a great presentation by Dr. Kelly Brownell, director of the World Food Policy Centre, among numerous other titles. He spoke about the difficulty we often face when addressing food-related issues through policy as something that benefits one area (e.g. nutrition) may cause unintended harm in another (e.g. agriculture). The goal of his new centre is to bring stakeholders from all the areas together to try to develop policies that will benefit all areas. As an aside, one thing I noticed about the list of stakeholders he shared was the lack of the public. As “end users” I think that it’s essential that the public (or specific groups from the public such as those experiencing food insecurity) are involved in these discussions.

Later in the morning we had an excellent presentation by Nishta Saxena, a dietitian. Maybe I’m a little bit biased as an RD but I felt that she did a fantastic job of presenting the struggles we face in addressing healthy eating with clients when they are constantly bombarded by misinformation in social media. How do we combat “sexy” social media influencers as professionals who must provide evidence-based factual information and are less inclined to posed half naked with overflowing mason jars of green smoothies? Several years later and dietitians still aren’t sexy ;)

We also had Saxena and chef Christine Cushing call out juicing and juice diets (while a new cold pressed juice company presented at one of the breakout sessions and provided samples during food breaks). Cushing mocked the caveman diet and then we had a snack break with “paleo” brownies. Saxena belittled meal kits and our swag bags contained a coupon for Hello Fresh. Hello elephant.

Follow-up Saxena’s fantastic presentation with a discussion with Dr. David Ludwig and his wife chef Dawn Ludwig to promote their new book “Always Delicious” which we all got a copy of in our swag bags. Full disclosure, I have been critical of Ludwig in the past. I tried to come into it with an open mind though, I really did but the elephant would not settle down. Despite their protestations that it was not a diet book, if it talks about weight loss, fat adaptation, is filled with testimonials (from readers who have lost weight), and has a prescriptive DIET with three phases, it’s a goddamn diet book. I’m not going to get into the science of his insulin hypothesis here because my point is not to critique his beliefs but if you want to read more about it I recommend this short article by Stephan Guyenet. I’m also not here to question the “success” people have had on Ludwig’s diet. If people are happier and healthier following this plan, I think that’s great. My issue is with the framing of this diet as the best way to eat for everyone and that the best way of eating is one that promotes weight loss. They talked about “NSVs” (non-scale victories) but the only examples I saw in the book and heard during the talk were a reduction in blood pressure and going down a pant size (which while technically not a weight loss “victory” is still a “victory” over an “unruly” body).

For a day that was meant to promote health through food there was a whole lot of talk about The Obesity Problem which is really not the direction that we want to take if we want to encourage people to have healthy relationships with food and their kitchens. I encourage everyone to read this piece about one woman’s “life as a public health crisis”. If obesity is a “problem” then food is the enemy. That mindset does not lead to healthy attitudes and behaviours. You don’t need to “retrain” your fat cells, they are not disobedient puppies. Rather, we as a society need to retrain our attitudes toward our bodies and our food so that we can once again be friends with both.

As you probably know, March is Nutrition Month. Traditionally this is the month in which dietitians come out in full force on social media, and in news articles, with nutrition tips, recipes, etc. This year I noticed a change. Yes, dietitians are still out there telling everyone to eat more vegetables, promoting the profession, and encouraging people to “unlock the potential of food”. Interspersed throughout those posts and articles though are ones from a new voice, naturopaths.

The use of the term “evidence based” concerns me. What evidence might that be? Those of us working in dietetics and medicine often talk about the need for treatments, interventions, and programs to be evidence-based. However, these interventions are only as good as the evidence on which they’re based. Ideally, you want high level evidence like guidelines and and summaries which draw on a larger body of research demonstrating consistent results (check out the 6S Pyramid from the National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools for more details). At the bottom of the pyramid, are single studies. The single studies aren’t necessarily poor (they’re the foundation for the higher levels of the pyramid) but if there aren’t many and they aren’t in agreement it becomes difficult to make solid evidence-based recommendations. Also, it can be easy to cherry pick single studies to support nearly any position and proclaim your stance to be “evidence-based”. Without attending naturopath school, I can’t say how credible the evidence-base they’re drawing on is with certainty. However, based on what I see on the websites, social media feeds, and have heard from many people who’ve seen naturopaths, I think it’s wise to question the quality of the nutrition education they’re receiving.

I also question the statement about collaborating with RDs. I’m sure that someone will tell me I’m wrong in the comments but in my experience, I have never heard of a naturopath referring a client to a dietitian. Considering their 155 hours of nutrition education and their alleged nutritional knowledge I’m not sure why they would see a benefit to referring a client on to one of us.

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that the plural of anecdote is not evidence and I’m sure that seeking responses from twitter is likely to have skewed toward my own bias, but I was curious what sort of nutrition advice people are receiving from naturopaths. I received a number of responses ranging from negative to positive. I assured everyone anonymity so names have been changed – thank you to everyone who was willing to share their experience(s) with me. Here you have it:

The good:

Emma told me that they started seeing a naturopath to improve her diet, energy, and overall health. She found the naturopath to be very down-to-earth with realistic expectations and advice in-line with current research. She said, “She’s always been incredibly supportive; always learning; always approaching everybody as an individual and very willing to make adjustments depending upon someone’s reactions to process.” This naturopath also provided affordable recipes and shopping plans.

Ava went to a naturopath for IBS and was told to try a FODMAP elimination diet.

The bad:

Emma’s naturopath promoted organic products as best and advised her to avoid GMOs.

Ava was also told to eliminate gluten (despite having expressed no issue with gluten and not having celiac disease). She was also not provided with sufficient support to feel like she could adhere to the low-FODMAP diet and quickly abandoned it.

Liam was diagnosed with hypercholesterolemia and prescribed medication by his doctor. He didn’t tolerate it well so he went to a naturopath who sold him a special drink and put him on an alkaline diet.

Sophia went to a naturopath to help her control her severe asthma. The naturopath advised her to eliminate gluten and follow a vegan diet with the explanation that, animal products increase inflammation in the body and were worsening her asthma. As she had previously eliminated gluten and experienced no benefit she followed a vegan diet for about 6 months. She experienced no decrease in symptoms during this time so she reintroduced animal products to her diet.

The ugly:

Liver cleanse supplements were part of the plan provided by Emma’s naturopath.

Olivia went to see a naturopath and was told to cut out dairy, given a stack of photocopied book chapters and opinion pieces, and $800 worth of liver detox tablets, supplements, and powders. To be fair, this was pre-Internet times so photocopies were not so odd, and the profession may have grown since then. But, that also makes the cost of supplements even more exorbitant than it sounds today.

Isabella told me, “I got “nutrition advice” from a naturopath. I walked in, he fat-shamed me, and gave me a whole sheaf of paper basically outlining how I already eat.”

Mia was advised to consume raw milk, and to give the same to her three year old child.

Amelia has both celiac disease and multiple sclerosis. Despite following a gluten-free and dairy-free diet, taking recommended supplements and medications, she still experienced digestive issues. She went to see a naturopath who advised her to get IgG allergy testing. Due to the nature of this not recommended form of allergy testing the naturopath told her she could no longer consume the foods that she was consuming the most of leaving her with very little that she could still eat.

Harper went to see a naturopath after being diagnosed with breast cancer. After spending over $15, 000 on a “natural” treatment overseas she ended up having a double mastectomy but sadly died within a year.

If this is the sort of nutrition advice that naturopaths are providing I’d rather have Nutrition Month remain the echo chamber of dietitians promoting truly evidence-based nutrition recommendations.